A Changed Climate

Early modern England’s climate was inconsistent, possibly due to changes in atmospheric circulation, solar activity, or volcanic activity elsewhere on the planet. The changes English people experienced in common weather patterns resulted in repeated poor harvests after 1550, causing this era to also be referred to as the Little Ice Age. This series of climactic impacts on crops and livestock drove up prices, making food unaffordable for most labourers. During the 16th century, the price of grain (and thus bread) rose as much as sixfold. Many common people struggled with hunger and malnutrition, eventually leading to social unrest.

Famine

The severity of famine in England was dire on several occasions in the 16th and 17th centuries. The nation experienced more than 40 riots over food and food prices in the period between 1586 and 1631. In the famine of 1623, the people became desperate, as shown in a report from a Lincolnshire landlord who wrote that his neighbor stole a sheep and tore a leg out, and did eat it raw and that Dog’s flesh was a dainty dish and found upon search in many houses.

Enclosure

Another factor that amplified famine’s toll was a new feature of the English agricultural landscape called enclosure, which was the conversion of peasants’ common grazing or other arable lands into privately owned pastures for livestock production. With the majority of the common land lost and replaced with enclosures, many landless laborers and smaller farmers, called smallholders, lost their jobs. This can be seen in Book 1 of Sir Thomas More’s , where he describes landowners who have enclosed every acre for pasture and left no land free for the plow.

Inflation and Profiteering

Some profit-driven farmers and merchants attempted to make quick money off the catastrophe by hoarding grain and withholding it from the open market, thus raising the food prices even higher. Grain was considered important for the well-being of English people—the poor often lived on bread, porridge, and a vegetable and grain stew called pottage—so policies were put into place by the government to both prohibit the export of grain and enforce of laws against hoarding grain.

Shakespeare, who was a landowner and commodity trader in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, in addition to being a successful playwright in London, opportunistically benefited from the famine and inflation. Some of his acts of exploitation, for which he was sometimes fined by the courts, include: Purchasing food-producing land and storing grain, malt, and barley to resell to his neighbors and other tradesmen over a 15-year period. Holding 80 bushels 480 lbs of malt or corn during a time of shortage (Archer et al. 10). Pursuing debt repayment for food supplies and using the money gained to further his moneylending activities.

How Famine Influenced Literature

Printers and publishers found opportunity by printing many famine pamphlets, which contained detailed or graphic descriptions of the public’s desperation. For example, the Geneva preacher Lodowick Laveter’s were translated and published in English in 1596.

Although Shakespeare benefited from the inflation caused by the famine, he still wrote about hunger and social inequality. showcases the disparity in social status and wage inequality. Lauren Shook suggests that Shakespeare used characters such as the story’s lovers, Rosalind and Orlando, to represent the privileged aristocratic population who benefit from lower-class laborers—such as Adam and Corin—while offering little to no compensation in return.

Shakespeare also threads the themes of famine and social stratification in . The play begins in Rome where the people are starving, when attempt to revolt against the nobles for hoarding food. The suffering and anger in the play’s opening act reflects the grim reality and feelings many likely felt during the famine in Shakespeare’s era: We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely. But they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.(1.1.12–19)

Key Print Sources Archer, Jayne Elisabeth et al. . , vol. 9, no. 1, 2015, pp. 9–17. Lavater, L. . Translated by William Barlow. London: Thomas Creede, 1596. Shakespeare, William. . . Edited by Gary Taylor et al. Oxford Univerisity Press, 2016. Sharp, Buchanan. . . Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 215–235.

Key Online Sources Best, Michael. . . . University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/husbandry/famine.html. Accessed 30 Oct. 2023. Bramley, Anne. . . 23 Apr. 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/23/475291416/in-shakespeares-day-hunger-tore-through-england-his-plays-tell-the-tale. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. . , 25 Feb. 2013, https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure. . Smith College. https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/the-effects-of-the-little-ice-age/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2025. Healey, Jonathan. . , vol. 59, no. 2, 2011, pp. 151–75. , http://www.jstor.org/stable/23317097. Accessed 22 Oct. 2022. Lee, Alexander. . , 3 Apr. 2013, https://www.historytoday.com/shakespeare-hoarder. Shook, Lauren. . , 19 April 2022. https://medium.com/the-sundial-acmrs/i-earn-that-i-eat-hungry-food-workers-in-as-you-like-it-dc0b739bacd6.

Image Sources Poussin, Nicolas. . 1652–1653. Oil on canvas. . https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poussin_Coriolan_Les_Andelys.jpg.